Remember the spinach and sunflower seed diet?

Hi thank you for sharing your experiences and experiments with your diet, happy it works for you and hope it might help some others.

Here's the thing with the diet. What you're suggesting is quite different from other UC diets - some people swear they found remission by being vegan/vegetarian for example, while what you propose is quite animal-heavy. Some people regard nuts and eggs as inflammatory and to be avoided...I would not be able to follow your diet because dairy gives me stomach cramps and diarrhea, and honey gives me acne. I also remember being very intolerant to spinach while flaring (i tried making spinach soup - 10 minutes later, green poo).

I can only conclude that diet is a very personal thing depending on individual circumstances and that there is no single unifying diet that heals UC.

Added to this, last time I saw my GI, he was telling me that the latest research shows that there are different types of UC,depending on where the inflammatory markers are produced within the bowel wall. Which leads me to suspect that people who can control their UC with diet have a different form of UC than those who can't. And hence again, there is no unifying diet to heal everyone...

Eating spinach gave me kidney stones. Nope.

Hmm I'm more like UCyousee in that i try to eat anti-inflammatory and nutrient-dense foods as much as my body can tolerate, because that's good for overall health, but beyond that I gave up trying to fix myself with diet years ago.

I'm not an expert on this but I thought the dietary approach was all about butyrate production?

UCyousee, no i didn't write much about it and as I'm not a medical specialist I forget the technical terms, so apologies for my handwavey explanation. As my dr explained it to me, they have been taking biopsies from patients (including me) before and after starting a new medication and studying where the inflammatory molecules are concentrated. Apparently although it's the same inflammatory response, the origin lies in different parts of the bowel wall. They think this is the key to why patient A responds to remicade but not xeljanz, and patient B responds to xeljanz but not remicade (for example). The goal is that one day you can take a biopsy and use that to decide which drug a patient needs, rather than the miserable trial and error system that we have to go through now. So I asked him "does that mean there are different types of colitis?" and he said "Yes, absolutely"..That's why I'm always cynical about cure-everyone remedies.

Both spinach and sunflower seeds share one main thing.
IRON
I did great after my resection until I went off my iron pills. One of the symptoms of Crohn's can be anemia.

The idea here is that not everyone can tolerate everything while flaring BUT, foods play an important and often overlooked role in the our gut health. There are more than one food that contain all of the nutrients required. We should focus on eating a balanced diet from whole foods, free from additives (which are showing more and more to be linked to IBD) and as much variety as possible. Filter your water.
Veggies pureed in soup, smoothies, whatever it takes, but don't avoid fiber forever.
Avoid the harder to digest until you're starting to heal and introduce SLOW.
Remember, the human body does not digest fiber, our gut bacteria does. So even if you're healed, eating beans or spinach or brocolli is not going to sit well because the bacteria that digests it is gone. The only way to re-balance this is to feed them. Add a teaspoon of lentils to soup sometime. Add ONE piece of brocolli to a smoothie...etc etc. Do this for as long as you need and maybe add another.
Move forward, move backwards as much as it takes. I'm flaring right now, but no matter what, we need nutrients. You can't live off of white bread and white pasta forever. You just can't. There are great resources out there for nutrition - IBD AID, AIP Diet, etc etc.
Oatmeal, Sweet Potatoes, Blueberries, Mango, Walnuts all show specifically to help UC, gut bacteria. Feed them and they'll pay you back with Short Chain Fatty Acids like Butyrate which help to lower inflammation.

I take meds and maybe always will. BUT, you can still improve your quality of life and how your body tolerates and responds to treatment w/ lifestyle choices. Take short walks, enjoy variety of foods (prepared any way you need), and most of all remember you're not alone. Places like this forum, or facebook groups have been invaluable to me too. Keep sharing and helping each other.

Thanks Flowers,

I know food makes alot of us nervous and some say it doesn't matter what we eat, which may be true for how it makes us react, but not true long term. We didn't get sick in one day and we can't heal in one day.

Have fun with it. I've made some pretty good soups by accident haha.

But don't give up. Like I said I'm flaring flaring and taking meds along with a steroid right now, but I'm hoping that eating more aware is going to help me feel better...Along with treatment of course.
Even if it's steroids and spinach and sunflower seed 😆. Real food is key! The information out there is huge now. More and more people are finding success with and without meds and sharing their stories. We're not all the same but wouldn't we take note of the what they're doing?

It's all the same...movement, and real food. Every. Single. One of them.

TT - I've read lots about raw milk being beneficial.
Can't get it here in Canada, so I haven't been able to try. I do use Kefir tho, sometimes from Dairy, sometimes from Coconut. Not sure if it helps or not.

Thank you, Colby! I really think you are on to something. I was doing research on this and found this study: https://lupusnewstoday.com/2016/02/04/dietary-patterns-may-affect-lupus-activity/ The study involved over 100 people and found that dietary patterns impacted their lupus. Lupus, as you might know is an autoimmune disease like ulcerative colitis, and I personally believe that they are related, because I have had symptoms of both. Also, there is more and more research showing that lupus is related to the microbiome.

In the study, they analyzed 49 nutrients, and they identified five of them to have an effect: beta carotene, calcium, linoleic acid, b12, and b6.

Here is the quote from the article. "Beta-carotene, fatty acid C18:2, and vitamin B6 were all associated with a certain protection from unfavorable outcomes, whereas vitamin B12 and calcium increased the likelihood of unfavorable outcomes." Beta carotene, and calcium, were also two nutrients that you identified as needing to be in the diet of ulcerative colitis patients, with calcium needing to be limited, and beta carotene needing to be high.

Also, the study found that it was good to consume a lot of fatty acid C18:2 - guess what that is, and where it is found? It is linoleic acid, which is found in nuts and seeds, especially sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. Just like you recommended eating a lot of nuts and seeds and especially sunflower/pumpkin.

The study found that vitamin b12 needed to be limited in lupus patients. I think this is found mainly in eggs, meats, and dairy products.

The study also found that vitamin B6 was protective. I couldn't really find a definitive list of the foods highest in this vitamin, as it seems to be in a bunch of different foods, including bananas and potatoes.

Anyway, the point is that if you look at the foods that you are recommending to eat a lot of, and the foods you are recommending to limit, they are very similar to what was found in this study. This study was from about 5 years ago, and I know you started making your discoveries way before then. I don't think we have all the answers yet. Who even knows if a study on lupus patients is relevant to ulcerative colitis patients? Yet I personally think it is, because I think it is all related to the microbiome and because, as I said, I not only have ulcerative colitis, but I also have had symptoms of lupus (including the characteristic butterfly rash). I think ulcerative colitis and lupus might be two sides of the same coin, but a healthy microbiome might be able to control the symptoms of both.

I have been eating sunflower seed butter and have noticed it helping. The seeds themselves are too harsh for me. I have yet to try pumpkin seeds.